RedSky Technologies announced a new downloadable smartphone application that provides personalized E911 protection while improving security on college, university and corporate campuses.
Using Your Smartphone to Enhance Your Safety
If a user with My e911(™) calls 9-1-1, their call and location information will be routed to the most effective public safety answering point (PSAP) for response from the appropriate police, fire or ambulance.
The app then notifies the campus or corporate security personnel with a Google Map with the callers exact location. Obviously, this would result in a quicker response time and hopefully, reduce the impact of the campus crime. (learn more here)
What I like about this app is the ease of use
The My e911(TM) app is available for iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones. There are minimal requirements for the college, corporation or individual. By integrating the IT pieces, the next biggest issue is simply to educate individuals to the existence of the app and getting them to install it on their smartphone.
The My e911(TM) application takes care of the rest. It sits in the background, as I understand it, and automatically processes and relays the necessary information to the appropriate parties.
What is E911 and Why Is It Important?
While just about everyone in North America is familiar with dialing 9-1-1 in an emergency, you may not be so familiar with E911. The “E” stands for “Enhanced.”
The system is “enhanced” because when the 911 services was first implemented back in the 1960’s, it provided the ability to quickly connect to emergency services. (learn more about e911 here)
However, when it first started out, it only connected the caller with emergency services, it did not provide any other information. So, if the person-in-need was unable to talk, the dispatcher had no way of knowing who was calling, and more importantly, from where.
Well, the 911 service was improved and eventually became “Enhanced” over the years to provide location information of the caller. When the dispatcher received a call, they knew from where it was coming. Whether the caller communicated or not, did not matter, they could dispatch help.
Along came mobile phones and the 911 dispatcher had the same problem. So, with “enhanced” or E911, the latest technology is used to triangulate and pinpoint callers exact location.
With services like Vonage, the user must manually register their location. Now, RedSky Technologies have integrated all of that into My e911(TM) smartphone app to automate the process even further. Individuals need only install the app and can then feel secure and enhance their campus security even more.
